Instagram founders Insta-gone from Facebook as Zuck takes control

Facebook's CEO has been installing his people in key positions at Instagram, which is one of the firm's most successful acquisitions. This should come as no surprise

Kevin Systrom, one of the two founders of Instagram who have resigned from Facebook (REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)

The founders of Instagram are Insta-gone from Facebook.

The official line is ‘so sorry you’re going!’ and 'best of luck!'.

The most recent post to the Instagram accounts of Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger (@kevin and @mikeyk if you want to follow the lives of the youthful tech gurus) shows a roomful of smiling staff standing behind the pair. The caption pays gushing tribute to them, but also to @Zuck (Mark Zuckerberg) and his chief lieutenants. They, of course, have paid gushing tribute back.

Behind the scenes, the word is that this has been coming for a while.

The Insgrammers were promised they could run the thing independently after Facebook spent $1bn on buying it and that’s worked out pretty well.

Instagram is now worth a large multiple of the purchase price, having become a cultural phenomenon and one of Facebook’s most successful acquisitions.

At a time when Facebook's core platform is slowing, while the business grapples with an ongoing scandal over the treatment of its customers’ data, it has also become extremely important.

Instagram is popular with younger users, and is comfortably handling the competitive threat posed by Snapchat. Right now it looks like the future. It’s certainly the sexy part of the business.

As such, it really shouldn’t come as any great surprise that Facebook CEO Zuckerberg wants to keep it close, and under his thumb, by installing his people in key positions despite how well it has been doing under its founders.

It’s standard corporate practice the world over.

People like @kevin and @mikeyk, don’t tend to be well suited to the intrigues and ass kissing that go with working for a big company.

Entrepreneurs mostly aren’t, unless they’re at the top, like the Zuck, which helps to explain some of the other departures from his firm. Whatsapp’s founders, for example, are also gone. One of them, Brian Acton, is notably no longer a fan, having called on people to #deletefacebook in the wake of the data scandal.

Selling up early can prove to be the right decision.

It made multimillionaires of the the Instagram pair in 2012, when they were callow grads not all that long out of Stanford University, who’d spent much of the outfit’s early days battling to keep the servers going.

Facebook’s clout undoubtedly helped turn their business into the monster it is today.

But despite the promises that were made to them, they’d lost control of their baby the moment they signed on the dotted line.

@kevin and @mikeyk are, we are told, now going to take some time off. They’re also going to “explore their creativity” which will presumably lead to the creation of a new venture.

People with the drive and the ability to create hugely successful businesses like Instagram are not the sort of people who are psychologically suited to sitting on sun kissed Caribbean islands enjoying their wealth for very long.

If what they come up with next proves to be a success, will they willingly entertain a second big money offer if one comes? I’m betting no.